Behringer BCF2000

[LIMiT]

For a $200 DAW controller,..the BCF2000 is great. It serves its purpose, and has pros and cons (like just about EVERYTHING out there).

I beleive I read somewhere that only 2 units can be chained in PT....somewhere on the Behringer site.

Personally,...I bought a BCF2000 when they first came out, and now need something more. $200 wasn't alot of money, ..and I'd say it was worth its cost, ...but I do wish I had that extra $200 now to throw into my 01v96 (financing)

Just something to ponder.

-LIMiT

[R1ch]

WoW!

I don't see what the big problem is here.

When choosing different gear part of the reasons what you choose is down to persoanl preference.

If Joe bloggs wants to say "Oh blah blah is a piece of s**t" then so be it.
It's down to each individual to be responsible for the research THEY them selfs have carried out.

While at my moms this weekend I spent the whole of it gathering information on low buget control surfaces from many posts here and on other forums regarding the BCF2000.

One common nag I noticed everybody bi**hing about was the touch sensitive jargon. I thought to myself one bad thing to say about a piece of equipment that does exactly what I want it to do, which is controls faders, play, record automation etc(to a certain extent)and would not break the bank to make that purchase.

I've been looking at a control surfaces (since I bought PTMP in June) and wanted something I regard as cheap and cheerful so today I spent just £100 on the BCF2000 which to me is not much at all for what it does.

Build quality isn't bad either I have a Mackie 24/8 which is starting to strip on the corners from only couple of years ownership!, BCF feels solid and is not too heavy.
Also I like the fact that the BCF bares the same charactaristics like Makckie in terms of the lip at the bottom of the console.

At the store today I had a feel of the faders on the C/8 and the Mackie control.
My opinion is the faders on the C/8 felt no different from those of the BCF2000 and that the Mackie's faders (made by Penny and Giles who make SSL faders etc) had the best feeling faders to me.

And all this ranting and raving about how hard it is to install and get it going in PT.
While watching lastnights VMA's and eating lunch I installed the latest drivers and upgraded the firmware, opended up PTMP when to setup> peripherals> midi controllers and selected HUI from the menu pressed ok and was done in less than 10mins, it was a breeze.

I think every product that hits the market has their pitfalls and yes we all know Behringer's products quiet often do not live up to our expectations. But with regards to the BCF2000, Behringer should get credit when it's evident credit is due!

[Arya44]

In PT Preference, automation tab, "touch time out for non touch sensitive faders" you can set the amount of time before PT disengages from the fader that is being moved. If you like to stay at a particular point after fader movement, you can use "latch" mode. For me, Auto Touch is good for transitional pieces when I like the fader finds the next automation value previously written in write or latch mode.

[benunh]

Just wanted to let you all know that I just got another 2 BCFs and they are up and running fine.
After minimal hair pulling, I got all three to be recognized by PT and working correctly (all plugged into different USB ports).
The only sticking point I had (for those looking to try it) was that you have to give each BCF a unique identifier so PT can recognize all three.
To do this, get out of any emulation mode you might be in by powering down and starting it back up while pressing the top button on track 1.
Then press EDIT (hold) and press STORE to get to the Global Menu.
The ID knob is on track 4 (I think) and you should give each BCF a different ID number (I found that PT liked it better when I didn't use #1. I used 2, 3, and 8).
Then press EXIT and go back into BHUI mode.
Now you're good to start PT and indicate your peripherals.

Rock on!

Ben

[theom]

just to confirm it:

You have 3 bcf's all working via usb (no midi chaining) with pt le.


that's brill, love it.

[davetron5000]

Your three bullet points would've made your post actually useful. Thanks for finally including them.

[Arya44]

Hi there,

If you don't mind, I like to know how you found 01V96. I was trying to find a workstation with mic pres, ADAT out for my 002R and faders and knobs that also work as DAW control (hopefully for ProTools as well). I read about 01V96 in the internet but still not sure certain things.

I don't know if the mic pres are not too noisy at high input gain. I don't expect super clean sound. I have 002R which supposed to have decent quality Focusrite mic pre and they are still noisy at high level anyway.

Also, I found even my double 2gig processor Mac is not sometimes enough for the number of plug-ins I put in the session with PTLE. So, I thought having the external processing power is a nice option. Did you find the signal processing features of 01V96 are pretty good compare to software plug-ins (e.g. Waves stuff)? Does 01V96 offer lots of insert points?

I may have to take the equipment out of my studio to the location of a band. I was wondering if I use 01V96, can I send all 12 mic pre signals to ProTools (using ADAT and lineout simultaneously) while sending direct out to the band headphones to avoid latency?

I appreciate your response.

Arya

[benunh]

You are correct.
To confirm...

I have three BCF2000s all working with PTLE 6.9 all of them plugged in via USB 2.0 with NO hub. All of them are plugged into a PCI USB 2.0/Firewire card.

They work great now.

Ben

[benunh]

Just ran my first full session with a client with the 3 BCF2000 setup.
About 24 tracks will a normal amount of plugins running (including 2 verbs and a delay) and midi running through SampleTank and there was noticable slow-down in performance.
It got better after I got rid of ST but still, I wasn't expecting the BCFs to use so much energy. Kinda bummed about it, and may just end up upgrading my CPU and memory.

Not sure if all midi controllers have this effect or if it's just the BCF that taxes the system so much...
Anyway, thought you'd all like to know.

(again, I'm running 3 BCF2000 all running via USB to ProTools 6.9 on an AMD Athlon 2400+ system with 512MB memory on WinXP).

Ben

[yavuzj]

Hey Ben,

I have asked you 10 times between the MAC and the PC forum.
Can you or can you not control plugins with BCF2000?
Can you please answer?